The New Culture

Galatians 6:7-16

I remember one summer when I was in my 20’s. An older couple in my home church had some relatives coming from Germany and this older couple asked me to spend some time with them. I had never met these two guys but it was kind of exciting meeting someone from Germany. They spoke reasonable English but I spoke no German. At times, when we were trying to explain to them something about American life, they didn’t seem to get it, but then suddenly one of them would make the connection, and he would rattle off a whole explanation to his brother in German and they would laugh. We were never quite sure if they were laughing because of the communication challenges, or laughing because of the silliness in the way we did things. What seemed so normal to us, wasn’t so normal to them.

For example, in Iowa, they had to learn the slang. “Ya you betcha,” is the common affirmative response. They had to learn that directions in Iowa always include reference to N, S, E, or W and the road surface is almost always “gravel.” “You go north for two miles and then turn west for a quarter mile and you’re there!” Rarely are descriptions like “street” or “city” used. They are just not helpful. Streets and cities are for places like Des Moines. These two German visitors learned looked on with astonishment when cars stopped along the road for farm machinery or livestock. Loose cows, wayward pigs, and farm machinery always have the right of way. These young German men heard winter stories because there’s always a winter lurking in the future. They heard winter wisdom: when the weather gets really cold in the winter, you don’t complain because there’s always someone who lives farther north than you do. And these young men learned there’s a delicate distinction between being nosy and communal concern. If your neighbor’s kitchen light stays on all night, it’s not nosy to call them up in the morning and ask them if they’re all right. It’s just neighborly. It is nosy though to ask someone what dish they’re bringing to the church pot luck because everybody knows that Minnie brings the chicken casserole, Fannie brings the pumpkin pie, and to duplicate these dishes would be like moving your neighbor’s fence five feet off the property line. There are lines you just don’t cross.

I often wondered what these German visitors said to their friends when they went back to Europe? Their visit to central Iowa placed them squarely in the midst of a different way of living; they were in a whole new world.

Paul’s letter to the group of churches in Galatia gives us the story of people who were trying to adapt to life in a totally new world. The Galatians were not living in a new geographical location. They were in a new spiritual locale. Paul brought them news of the grace of God through Jesus.[1] This still is a hard concept to embrace: that God would accept, love, forgive, and save us simply through our belief. The Galatians lived in the same world we do – it’s a world where you work for everything you get. So hearing that God’s grace comes as a gift was…and is…hard to swallow. So, when some Jewish Christians came to Galatia and told the locals that salvation by faith is fine, but it’s good to supplement it with Jewish customs and rituals, the people were intrigued. Here was a gospel that fit into their world. It made sense to them to work for their salvation. It made sense to look the part of a Christian so that others could see their righteousness. These same things make sense to us too. So Paul wrote this letter to urge the Galatians to get back on the grace track. The Gospel doesn’t need a supplement. God’s grace is sufficient. Oh, it’s alright to have tangible evidence of your faith because everything we do has eternal implications[2] but don’t try and buy off God. It won’t work. That’s why Paul writes, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked…”[3]

When we read this passage, there is a struggle within us. Most good church people are drawn to phrases like, “…you reap whatever you sow…”[4] and “…let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.”[5] We’re drawn to these phrases because most of us try to do the right thing and live good lives. And we look pretty good when we compare ourselves next to people in the world who don’t seem to give God the time of day. We preachers like these words because when we read them, we think of all the people in our congregations that need to straighten up![6]

The struggle surfaces when we realize that these expressions are meant to be heard in the context of the cross. Paul is not out to condemn good works. In fact, they are evidence of the fullness of Christ within us.[7] Yet, these words are to be heard in the shadow of the cross. Jesus rescued us from our sin through his work on the cross. We are offered the gift of salvation through his blood. What we do and how we live should find it origin in the cross.

In 1965, Bob Butler lost his legs in a mine explosion in Vietnam. He returned home a war hero. Around 1985, Butler was working in his garage one day in Arizona when he heard a woman screaming. He got in his wheelchair and began rolling toward the sounds but thick shrubbery wouldn’t let him get through. So he got out of his chair and crawled through the dirt and bushes. “I had to get there,” he said.

When he came through the last thicket, he found a woman paralyzed by fear as she stared at the bottom of a swimming pool where her 3-year old daughter lay. Stephanie Haynes was born without arms and had fallen into the pool and couldn’t swim. Bob Butler dove into the pool and brought Stephanie up. Her face was blue; she had no pulse, and was not breathing. Butler immediately started CPR, and reassuringly told the mother, “Don’t worry. I was her arms to get her out of the pool. Now, I’ll be her lungs. Together, we will make it.”

After a few moments more that seemed like hours, little Stephanie coughed and regained consciousness. It soon became apparent that she would be alright. When Stephanie’s mom asked Bob Butler how he knew it was going to be alright, Bob answered, “I didn’t know. But when my legs were blown off in Vietnam, the only one around was a little Vietnamese girl who kept telling me in broken English, “It’s okay. You can live. I will be your legs. Together we will make it. This little girl’s kind words brought me the hope I needed. Today, I wanted to do the same for Stephanie.”[8]

The core of the Gospel is that Christ has dived into human life and rescued us through his suffering on the cross. Paul told the Galatians…and us…there will be opportunities in life for us to be Bob Butler for someone else. We’ll may have to be someone else’s arms or legs. We’ll have to come alongside someone else to help. But that doesn’t save us. What saves us is the belief that it’s all about the cross. And that’s a strange new world for most of us.

Who needs to profess their belief in the cross today? Who needs to stand up and boast in what Jesus has done for them?

Amen.

[2] Frederick Parrella, “Theological Themes,” Lectionary Homiletics, Volume XVIII, Number 4, June-July 2007, p. 51.

[6] L. Gregory Jones highlights the tension in this passage in his article, “Cruciform Living,” The Christian Century, Volume 109, June 3-10, 1992, p. 580.

[8] “Haphazard Handoffs,” Homiletics, Volume 19, Number 4, pp. 23-24.